A California Billionaire Who Avoided the Spotlight Suddenly Finds Himself in It

Ronald W. Burkle, one of California's richest men, has quietly amassed billions of dollars over the years, along with a collection of houses -- including the silent film star Harold Lloyd's former Beverly Hills estate -- and a prized art collection. He has also gathered a flock of powerful friends from Hollywood, Wall Street and Washington that numbers former President Bill Clinton in its ranks.

Along the way, Mr. Burkle has made an art of keeping his financial, political and personal lives as private as possible.

"It doesn't do me any good for people to know about me or know what I'm doing because if you're low key, I think you can get a lot more done," Mr. Burkle, now 53, told an interviewer for Talk magazine several years ago. "People are always trying to project things onto you when you make a lot of money. I just do what I like doing -- that's it."

But people know who he is now. An unfolding federal investigation into possible extortion by a contributor to Page Six, The New York Post's popular and influential gossip page, has thrust Mr. Burkle, and the various gilded worlds he inhabits, into the national spotlight.

Mr. Burkle is a supermarket mogul and financier who, unlike some tycoons who court gossip columnists, has always said he prefers to be let alone.

He operates from a clutch of relatively nondescript offices on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles that once belonged to David Geffen, the DreamWorks co-founder. Mr. Burkle routinely refuses to grant interviews (though he is a front-runner in the scramble to purchase a dozen Knight Ridder newspapers) and has pushed in the courts and in the California Legislature to keep his divorce records confidential. His security team, said one of Mr. Burkle's associates, includes a former Secret Service agent.

The associate, who requested anonymity because of the criminal investigation, added that Mr. Burkle enjoyed his relative anonymity. "He travels all over the world, he has a lot of friends, but nobody cares about him," he said.

That seemed to change about a year ago, however, the associate said, when Mr. Burkle came under the glare of the Page Six column. Items about Mr. Burkle's social life and personal comings and goings began appearing on the page without any warning, or so much as a call for comment, the associate said -- and with little resemblance to the truth.

The Post responded with a letter asking Mr. Burkle to provide details on his complaints about the column.

With that, Mr. Burkle apparently decided to spring into action, drawing on personal resources he has tapped into throughout a career that began as a bagboy at a grocery store his father managed in Claremont, Calif. Mr. Burkle began speculating in the stock market while still a teenager, completed high school early, and dropped out of dental school to return to the grocery store business.

He then began an ill-fated bid to take over his employer, Stater Brothers, and invested briefly on his own before forming a holding concern, the Yucaipa Companies, named after a small town near Palm Springs where he owned a home.

From the mid-1980's to the late 1990's, Yucaipa became Mr. Burkle's platform for assembling supermarket holdings in Southern California and elsewhere that made him one of the biggest grocers in the nation -- with stakes in stores like Food 4 Less, Ralph's, Dominick's and Fred Meyer.

He sold those holdings to the Kroger Company in 1998 and since then has pursued various investments in the food, retail, manufacturing and media businesses. Such well-known investors as George Soros have backed his business deals, and his wealth, political donations and philanthropy (as well as a private 757 jetliner he owns) have allowed him to rub shoulders with financial and political leaders around the country.

Mr. Burkle, a kingmaker in California political circles and a confidant of a former governor, Gray Davis, has also been a loyal supporter of Mr. Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore, who both now have business relationships with him.

He had a highly publicized falling-out with Michael Ovitz, the former Hollywood power broker, several years ago, and came under the news media microscope in late 2000 for soliciting Mr. Clinton about a possible pardon for Michael Milken, the former junk-bond king and convicted felon. But for the most part, Mr. Burkle, who sits on the boards of the Occidental Petroleum Corporation and Yahoo, has avoiding engaging in high-profile business disputes.

"Corporate governance is not just for the boardrooms," Mr. Burkle said in a statement a public relations adviser issued yesterday.